When Brigadier General Murtala Ramat Muhammed removed General Yakubu Gowon in July 1975 he announced a commitment to return Nigeria to civilian rule by 1979. Murtala did not live to see that pledge enacted: he was assassinated on 13 February 1976 during an attempted coup led by Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka. His deputy, Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo, succeeded him as Head of State and resolved to continue the timetable for transition to civilian government.
Obasanjo’s regime pursued a managed, phased process designed to produce a constitution and organised elections rather than an abrupt reset. The transition combined preparatory drafting work, a Constituent Assembly convened from 1977 to mid-1978 to review the draft and public submissions, a formal lifting of restrictions on political activity in late-1978, the supervised registration of political parties and staged elections in 1979. These steps were intended to minimise the regional and parliamentary weaknesses that critics believed had undermined the First Republic.
Constitution-making and the Constituent Assembly
A drafting committee produced an initial draft constitution which was then considered, debated and revised by a 230-member Constituent Assembly. The Assembly first met in October 1977 and completed its deliberations in the first half of 1978; its proceedings and the public consultations that accompanied them shaped the final text. The government promulgated the new constitution on 21 September 1978; it was scheduled to come into operation on 1 October 1979, the same day the elected civilian administration would be sworn in. The constitution abandoned the First Republic’s parliamentary model in favour of a presidential system with separation of powers among executive, legislature and judiciary, a deliberate choice intended to reduce executive dependence on fragile coalition majorities.
Lifting the ban on political activity and party formation
Political activity had been constrained under successive military governments. In September 1978 the Obasanjo government lifted the ban on party politics and published rules for party registration that emphasised national spread and adherence to the transition timetable. Under those regulations several national parties were registered prior to the 1979 elections — among the most prominent were the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP). The restrictions and registration rules were designed to discourage narrowly regional or purely personality-based parties, though in practice regional loyalties and personalities still influenced party strength.
The 1979 electoral sequence and result
Elections were held in stages in 1979: legislative elections were conducted in July and presidential voting followed in August. The presidential poll on 11 August 1979 produced a victory for Shehu Shagari of the NPN, who, having met the constitutional requirements, was sworn in on 1 October 1979 — the same day the 1979 Constitution came into force and the military handed over. The orderly adherence to the announced timetable and the absence of a return to violent coup-led political change during that interval remain notable elements of the transition.
Institutional reforms and their limits
Obasanjo emphasised depoliticising the armed forces and professionalising the civil service, and his government continued infrastructure and human-development projects begun under previous administrations. Yet structural weaknesses persisted: the economy remained highly dependent on oil revenues and thus vulnerable to external price shocks; regional and ethnic cleavages continued to shape political competition; and many governance practices shaped by decades of military rule — including centralised decision-making and weak party institutionalisation — weakened the new democracy’s resilience. Those unresolved fragilities contributed to the instability that culminated in the Second Republic’s overthrow in 1983.
Why the 1976–79 transition matters
The 1979 handover established an important precedent: a military government deliberately carrying out a timetable to return power to civilians. The constitutional choice of a presidential executive and the institutional rules enacted in 1978–79 framed political expectations and influenced subsequent constitutional debates in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the experience also demonstrated the limits of formal designs if underlying political practice, economic management and party institutionalisation are weak. The Second Republic’s collapse shows that constitutional engineering alone cannot substitute for durable political norms and accountable governance.
Author’s note
Olusegun Obasanjo became Head of State on 13 February 1976 after the assassination of Murtala Muhammed and stewarded a structured transition that culminated in Shehu Shagari’s inauguration on 1 October 1979. That transition involved a drafting committee, the Constituent Assembly (convened October 1977 and reporting in mid-1978), promulgation of the 1979 Constitution on 21 September 1978, the lifting of restrictions on party activity in late 1978, party registration and staged elections in 1979. The outcome, an orderly transfer to a presidential civilian government, remains a qualified achievement tempered by the Second Republic’s later failure.
References
IA Ayua, “Federal Republic of Nigeria” (Constitutional history / forumfed PDF) — notes the Constituent Assembly’s work and the promulgation date (21 Sept 1978) and effective date (1 Oct 1979).
Princeton / academic timeline & Constituent Assembly reports (1977–78) — discussion of the Assembly’s convocation in October 1977 and its deliberations.
